David I of Scotland

“ The nobles were divided by feuds. Nobody was strong enough to make himself supreme. The country was governed by a committee of the nobles. Still, the reign of David II made two contributions to such constitutional theory as Scotland possessed. One of these is an emphatic reiteration of what had been done in the preceding reign. After his return from England, David, in pursuance of a private agreement with Edward III, attempted to persuade the Estates to acknowledge Prince Lionel of England as his heir. ”

“ The course of events in Scotland during the next seven years is outside the life of David. A new race of patriotic leaders—Murray of Bothwell, Robert the Steward, Douglas the Knight of Liddesdale—worthily sustained the fame of Robert Bruce, Douglas, and Randolph. At first they carried on the war with varying success, but ultimately they freed the country and retook all the castles. The greater attraction of a French campaign prevented Edward from ever using his whole strength against the northern kingdom. Not much is known of David's residence in France. ”

“ He told his discovery, and many of the conspirators were hanged, but many others found a refuge in Scotland. At length, in 1138, David entered England with a large army, and pushed forward as far as Northallerton in Yorkshire. He was there met by the forces of the Northern bishops and barons, gathered under the command of Walter Espec, Thurstan, the aged Archbishop of York, William of Albemarle, Roger of Mowbray, and other barons. ”

“ Sir David was one of the nobles who in 1320 signed the letter to the pope asserting the independence of Scotland. In 1346 he was appointed keeper of Edinburgh Castle, and in 1349 and again in 1351 he was sent as commissioner to England to treat for the ransom of David I. By his wife Mary, coheiress of the Abernethies, he had four sons: David, killed at the battle of Durham in 1346; Sir James, eighth lord of Crawford; Sir William of Byres; and Sir Alexander, father of Sir David, first earl of Crawford [q. v.] ”

“ A few instalments were paid, but the king sought to get rid of the liability by offering to make Edward III., or one of his sons, his successor in Scotland. In 1364 the Scottish parliament indignantly rejected a proposal to make Lionel, duke of Clarence, the next king; but David treated secretly with Edward III. over this matter, after he had suppressed a rising of some of his unruly nobles. The king died in Edinburgh Castle on the 22nd of February 1371. ”

“ In the midst of the Norman campaign, Philip urgently besought David, King of Scots, to make a diversion in his favour. Since 1341 David, then a youth of seventeen, had been back in Scotland. Prolonged truces gave him little opportunity of trying his skill as a soldier, and his domestic rule was not particularly successful. The full effects of the Franco-Scottish alliance were revealed when, early in October, the Scottish king invaded the north of England, confident that, as all the fighting-men 365were in France, he would meet no more formidable opponents than monks, peasants, and shepherds. ”

“ Meanwhile his representatives had obtained the upper hand in Scotland, and David was thus enabled to return to his kingdom in June 1341, when he took the reins of government into his own hands. In 1346 he invaded England in the interests of France, but was defeated and taken prisoner at the battle of Neville’s Cross in October of this year, and remained in England for eleven years, living principally in London and at Odiham in Hampshire. His imprisonment was not a rigorous one, and negotiations for his release were soon begun. ”

“ The king died in Edinburgh Castle on the 22nd of February 1371. His second wife was Margaret, widow of Sir John Logie, whom he divorced in 1369; but he left no children, and was succeeded by his nephew, Robert II. David was a weak and incapable ruler, without a spark of his father’s patriotic spirit.
See Andrew of Wyntoun, The orygynale cronykil of Scotland, edited by D. Laing (Edinburgh, 1872–1879) ; John of Fordun, Chronica gentis Scotorum, edited by W. F. Skene (Edinburgh, 1871–1872) ; J. H. Burton, History of Scotland, vol. ii. (Edinburgh, 1905) ; and A. Lang, History of Scotland, vol. ”

“ David, son-in-law of Waltheof, who gave Scotland worthy heirs to succeed him, surely ranks higher on the roll of royal saints than Eadward, son-in-law of Godwine, who left England to the chances of a disputed succession. One child only of this goodly stock is spoken of as falling away from the bright example of his parent. ”

“ This beautiful church is less richly decorated than many others in Scotland; its mouldings and clustered capitals are without flowering; yet from the loftiness of its windows, and the general symmetry of its proportions, this effort of the architectural taste and piety of King David I. is full of grandeur and dignity. From its walls hung the banners and scutcheons of the once powerful Earls of Strathearn, with the sword of Malise, who fought at the Battle of the Standard; and the helmet of Sir Maurice of Strathearn, who was slain at the Battle of Durham ”

“ David’s queen, Earl Waltheof’s heiress, were barons of the civilized court of England, where they learnt modes of taming their own savage Highland and island domains.
Thus, with few exceptions, the terms of alliance were well understood, and many of the Cumbrian barons were liegemen to both the English and Scottish kings. Scotland was in a flourishing and fast-improving condition, and there was no mutual enmity or jealousy between the two nations. ”

“ The departure of their king to render feudal service as an English baron, was viewed with general disapproval by the Scots, to whom this phase of the English connection appears to have been always distasteful. For nearly twenty years David and his grandson had enjoyed in succession the advantages of their English fiefs, without the burden of their feudal obligations; as during the lifetime of Stephen, and for the first three years of his successor’s reign, no king of Scotland had ever met an English sovereign except at the head of a hostile army. ”

“ It so happens that rather more information has come down to us respecting the commerce of Scotland than of England during the first half of the twelfth century. We have not only some very interesting notices respecting David I., who reigned from 1124 till 1153, from the historian Ailred, or Aldred, who was educated in Scotland along with Prince Henry, David's eldest son; but we have also a collection of the laws and customs of the burghs of Scotland, which professes to be as old as the reign of the same king, and is generally admitted to be, in the greater part, of that antiquity. ”

“ In 1358 he was appointed great chamberlain of Scotland, but held the office only about a year. He entered into an agreement with Edward III of England at Westminster (24 Feb. 1359) whereby he promised to remain with and faithfully serve the king of England against all the world (David, king of Scots, excepted) in return for a pension of six hundred merks sterling yearly, with compensation if on account of this agreement he should lose his Scottish estates (Rotuli Scotia, i. 830) . After this date he only occasionally appears in Scotland. ”

“ David is often represented, in modern times, as the exterminator of his fellow-countrymen, granting their lands to foreigners, and driving out the native Scottish race, or enslaving them beneath the yoke of alien masters—a course that could have hardly earned the character ascribed to him by his friend and biographer Ailred, “he was beloved by his own people the Scots, and feared by the men of Galloway.” It would be nearer the truth, perhaps, to describe him as the great confirmer of proprietary right throughout the settled portion of his kingdom ”

“ To suffer a man to die is not to kill him."
"True — I had forgot that policy. Well, then, suppose my uncle Albany does not continue to live — I think that must be the phrase — who then rules the court of Scotland?"
"Robert the Third, with consent, advice, and authority of the most mighty David, Duke of Rothsay, Lieutenant of the Kingdom, and alter ego; in whose favour, indeed, the good King, wearied with the fatigues and troubles of sovereignty, will, I guess, be well disposed to abdicate. So long live our brave young monarch, King David the Third! ”

“ It is not possible to credit David with any real affection for the cause of the empress or with any higher motive than selfish greed, and it can scarcely be claimed that he kept faith with Stephen. Such, however, were the difficulties of the English king, that, in spite of his crushing defeat, David reaped the advantages of victory. Peace was made in April, 1139, by the Treaty of Durham, which secured to Prince Henry the earldom of Northumberland, as an English fief. ”

“ The life of David has been written by his friend and admirer, Æthelred the Abbot of Rievaulx. He has drawn an attractive picture of an able and virtuous prince, kindly and courteous alike to high and low; ever ready to listen to the complaints of all his subjects and to set wrong right, and never turning his face away from any poor man. He tells us how the King himself dealt out justice to his subjects, and in his progress through the several districts of his kingdom, used, on set days, in person to hear the suits and to redress the wrongs of the poor and oppressed among his people. ”

“ In the year 1341, little David of Scotland came over with a little money and a few troops lent to him by the king of France, and with this assistance the Bruce made a tolerably decent appearance in his own country. Edward having projects of wholesale robbery abroad, gave up Scotland as a piece of retail plunder, that was wholly beneath his attention, and concluded a truce with David, who compromised with Baliol, by appointing him to keep watch and ward against the Scottish borderers. ”

“ Scotland was, comparatively speaking, a united and consolidated nation. Then, however, various disorders took place; and when Alexander, son of Canmore, at length obtained possession of the throne, the people seemed to have returned to their former condition of barbarism. In 1124 he was succeeded by his brother David, who, like his father, was sagacious and brave, an affectionate husband, and a gallant soldier. David, as the uncle of the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I., considered himself bound to support the title of that princess to the crown. ”

“ David, in November 1363, went to London and undertook a personal obligation to Edward to settle the Kingdom of Scotland upon him and his issue male, failing issue male of his own body. On this condition the whole of the ransom still unpaid was released. Nominal provisions were made in the event of an English heir succeeding to the Scottish throne for the preservation or the independence of Scotland similar to those of Edward I. This agreement was carefully concealed from the Scottish people, and the public negotiations for the payment of the ransom were still continued. ”

“ Alexander, together with the crown, received Scotland north of the Forth and Clyde, David the southern district with the title of earl of Cumbria. The death of Alexander I. in 1124 gave David possession of the whole. In 1127, in the character of an English baron, he swore fealty to Matilda as heiress to her father Henry I., and when the usurper Stephen ousted her in 1135 David vindicated her cause in arms and invaded England. But Stephen marched north with a great army, whereupon David made peace. ”

“ David's eldest son, the gallant Prince Henry, who had led the wild charge at Northallerton, predeceased his father in 1152. He left three sons, of whom the two elder, Malcolm and William, became successively kings of Scotland, while from the youngest, David, Earl of Huntingdon, were descended the claimants at the first Inter-regnum. It was the fate of Scotland, as so often again, to be governed by a child; and a strong king, Henry II, was now on the throne of England. ”

“ Honest David had now, like other great men, to go to work to reconcile his speculative principles with existing circumstances; and, like other great men, when they set seriously about that task, he was tolerably successful.
Ought Reuben Butler in conscience to accept of this preferment in the Kirk of Scotland, subject as David at present thought that establishment was to the Erastian encroachments of the civil power? This was the leading question, and he considered it carefully. “The Kirk of Scotland was shorn of its beams, and deprived of its full artillery and banners of authority ”

“ The dismemberment of his kingdom by the separation of Scottish Cumbria must have materially diminished his power; and had not Alexander died without an heir, the impolitic bequest of Edgar might have been fraught with most disastrous consequences to Scotland. The principality of David must inevitably, in course of time, have become dependant upon one of the greater kingdoms by which it was surrounded; it could only have existed by skilfully promoting disunion between its more powerful neighbours ”

“ Against such men, inspired by such righteous indignation, the mixed multitude of Scots, Picts of Galloway, Welshmen from Strathclyde, Northmen from the Orkneys, and English from the Lothians, who with a body of Norman knights made up the so-called Scottish host, had but small chance of success. This chance was made still smaller by what proved fatal to the cause of Scotland in many an after fight, the inevitable squabbles between the rival races. The Celts were jealous of the Norman strangers, and clamoured so loudly for their right of leading the van, that David at last gave in to them. ”